ABOUT US

Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas."Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.

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Monday, November 3, 2008

Uh, wow. In addition to being ripped apart limb by limb first by the scary bunnies on stage and then by both the Review-Journal's Mike Weatherford and the Sun's Joe Brown for essentially the same reasons, Criss Angel is now ranked 10th -- below Jubilee! and Danny Gans! -- on the most recent weekly ranking from TicketNews.Com.

The Cirque folks insist the show has a $5.5 million advance sale. But if tickets are reselling this weakly right at the start and word-of-mouth is going to spread rabidly as reviews like those are published, this is a pretty bad deal.

On the upside, though, the party on Friday night was just swell! I actually didn't take that many photos because I was taking video that I might turn into a special video podcast, although I don't really have the time right now to deal with that. The bash was held around the Luxor pool area and, as usual, Miles didn't want to come so here's Trevor behind one of the bunny masks they handed out.

As always, there was tons of food and drink, but it was too dark to shoot much of it. Here's a couple of bits:

He looks very friendly but actually, he was kind of annoyed by the attention. Oh well. Sorry, hobbit.

This being Halloween, many people were out in costumes. The second one below is for my friend Amy, who loves that Raisin' Canes place.

Oh, wait. That's not a costume. They really got married. I asked. And then, surprised, I recomposed myself to offer my congrats. I hadn't realized there was anything more tacky than getting married in Vegas on Valentine's Day, but if there is, it would be getting married on Halloween, no?

And finally...

Why? Why? WHY? Why would parents be schlepping their costumed kids around late into the evening in the mall connecting Mandalay Bay and Luxor on Halloween night? Why? No, really. Why?

THE STRIP FINALE

Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.